hi, I have tried to find the posting where someone mentioned that they make their own natural wormer for sheep, I would like to know more about:

how to make ithow often to use, etc

thanks

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Fri Jul 09, 2010 11:36 am

Aurora

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Joined: Fri Jul 09, 2010 3:22 pmPosts: 577Location: Barossa

Re: Natural Wormer etc for sheep

Hi I was just logging in to ask the same question! It is an organic drench of seaweed kelp and apple cider vinegar mentioned by expedite but don't know if its commercial or homemade. Please let us know and whether it would be effective against nasal bots Many thanksTracey

Yes we use a natural wormer for our sheep. Its really not a wormer, but a means of boosting there health. The idea is a healthy animal is less likely to have problems with worms.

For each sheep we give them 20ml or liquid seaweed, and 20ml apple cider. I did actually find something on the web which I used as a guide, but I just can't seem to locate it at the moment.

We use the Natrakelp distributor in Queanbeyan, and he also has apple cider in bulk. Because we don't have many sheep, it quite ok to use the animal grade seaweed liquid for your garden as well. Its just a higher grade mix then what you buy for the garden.

The last time we checked our worm count, it was very good, and it was just after lambing when there is probably the most stress on our ewes. I've not checked since then, as everyone seems to be in very good health, although I will check again after lambing to make sure everyone is dealing with the extra stress.

Another good time to give this mix is to your lambs just prior to weaning, again just to boost health over a stressful period in there life.

Of course any natural worm drench should be used in conjunction with good pasture management. As we don't have a high number of livestock, we are able to move our sheep around quite a bit, which reduces the possibility of worm infestation.

Thanks so much Carrie. I guess my problem is that there seems to be a definite issue with our ram who, since we have owned him (3 weeks), has developed a snotty nose. Everything i read suggests this would be nasal bot. In that case it seems organic drench would not be a 'cure' compared to an ivermectin drench which our share farmer is willing to dose them with this weekend. I really want to be organic in our dealings with the animals here but we have to balance the fact that our share farmer will expect 'normal' methods to be used as his sheep will be here at certain times of the year - tricky

Well the seaweed, apple cider would not hurt, it would at least boost his imune system to help him fight off whatever he has. It might be enough for him to be able to fight off what ever he has naturally.

A snotty noise doesn't always mean your sheep is sick, it certainly doesn't for our Wiltshire Horns, who often has snotty noises, a little now, but more so in later summer when its dry....all the dust apparently.

Ok so I had a look in Pat Coleby book 'Healthly Sheep Naturally' and she has a few parapgraphs on Nasual bots. In summary, if you sheep are sneezing a lot you might be able to see the bot larva that has been ejected. If you can handly your ram, she suggets putting Vicks or K7 (not sure what that is) on the nose which will often discourage these bots, or make the sheep sneese hard enough to disloge the larva as its crawls up into the nasel passages.

For a full grown animal it runs its life cycle in the nasal passages, causing nothing more than discomfort. However, in younger animals the nasel passage may be to small and it migrates into the brain, which can cause some serious problems often fatel.

Thanks for the info from Pat Coleby's book - i must get a copy! Interesting the snotty nose is not unfamiliar to you and not associated always with sickness.Reading about nasal bots gives me the creeps more than anything else

No problems. We were worried when we first identified it, but our sheep mentors said was nothing to worry about. However, if they start coughing alot, to keep an eye on it as it might mean that some of the flem has got onto there lungs and can then be a problem. Certainly last year with our lambing season we did not have any problems with the nasiel bot even though our girls were a little sniffy.

I'll need to double check this, but a friend of mine who has a merino stud uses dissolvable copper blocks (its a blue block) in their water supply. I'll ask him next time I see him.

Tue Jul 27, 2010 6:11 pm

Carrie

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Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2010 4:56 pmPosts: 829

Re: Natural Wormer etc for sheep

Yeap your right Gizzy, I've read the same, worms can often be a sign of low levels of copper. There are blocks at the CRT store in Yass on the back counter. It will also helps control the alge in the water supply you put them in.

Patersons Curse is also high in copper, so if you have a bit of that around (not good when its the only thing around) some animals will graze on this which will also keep there levels of copper up.

We use seaweed because there are lots of minerals in the product. Although if the alge gets bad over Summer, we have on occassion used the copper blocks as well.

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